万万没想到：这些语言的祖先都是英语！

English has morphed into several other languages all over the world.

英语已经演变成世界各地好几门其它语言。

Languages are ever changing, mixing and mutating, and sometimes they give birth to new ones.Three important factors linguists have identified in languages giving birth to other languages are time, separation, and contact.

语言一直在变，有混合、有演变，有时候还会产生新的语言。语言学家发现语言产生语言的三大因素为时间、分离和联系。

All languages change with time, as speakers innovate and economise.This does not quickly make a new language, but it can over time.

所有语言都随时代而变，说语言时人们精简话语、有所创新。语言不是一蹴而就的，需要时间。

Separation – geographical distance, cultural divergence, political independence – helps give a changed version of a language an independent identity.

分离，即地理上的距离、文化分化和政治独立，给了语言独立的省份。

Contact with other languages is a very important force: mutual influence leads to borrowing of words and even grammatical structures.

和其它语言的交流也是很重要的因素：相互影响引发借用其它语言的词汇、乃至语法结构。

Sometimes a simplified version is created for the purposes of trade, often using simplified grammar mainly from one language and adapted words from mainly from the other.

有时候，出于贸易的目的创造了简化版语言，通常用简化一门语言的语法，又从另一门语言借鉴改装了几个词。

Which languages will be to English as French and Italian are to Latin?

那么如同法语、意大利语和拉丁语的关系，哪些语言和英语有这般关系呢?

Tok Pisin

新美拉尼西亚语

Tok Pisin is an official language of Papua New Guinea and has about 120,000 native speakers and some 4 million second-language speakers. Tok Pisin began as a pidgin based on English with influence from German, Portuguese, and several Austronesian languages, but it gained native speakers who more fully elaborated it and made it a creole.

新美拉尼西亚语是巴布亚新几内亚独立国的官方语言，有12万人以此为母语，有4百万人以此为第二语言。新美拉尼西亚语一开始受德语、葡萄牙语和其它几门奥斯特罗尼西亚语言影响，是一门语言大杂烩，但以新美拉尼西亚语为母语的人多了，改良了语言，形成了克里奥语。

Pitkern

皮特肯语

The isolation of Pitcairn in the South Pacific and the mixture of people there made it a natural breeding ground for a distinct language, Pitkern.

皮特克恩地处南太平洋，偏居一隅，人群混杂，自然而然形成了别具一格的皮特肯语。

Gullah

嘎勒英语

Gullah is a creole based on English and West African languages, and it is spoken by some 250,000 people – mostly descendants of slaves – along the south-east coast of the US.

嘎勒英语是以英语和西非语言为基础的克里奥语，有25万人说嘎勒英语，多为奴隶的后代。

Sranan

斯拉南语

Sranan, spoken in Suriname, has an English base with vocabulary from Portuguese, Dutch, and West African languages.

苏里南共和国说斯拉南语，以英语为基础，词汇来自葡萄牙语、荷兰语和西非语言。

Singlish

新加坡英语

Singlish arose in the past century from the mixing of many different language groups within an English school system.

新加坡英语上一世纪兴起，混集了英语学校体系中多种语系。